CEOs look at upside of economic downturn

As the economy spirals downward, Chicago Mayor Richard Daley and a former mayor of Bogotá, Colombia, were in San Diego yesterday promoting privatization, partnering with business and experimenting with new ways to live in a post-boom environment.

The ideas from Daley and Enrique Peñalosa included building more parks, adding fewer freeway lanes, reforming government and empowering neighborhoods to solve their own problems.

“Government can only do so much,” Daley said at one of concluding sessions of the annual CEOs for Cities conference, adding later, “Government has to be more welcoming to business. I'm pro-business. You have to have business in the city to hire people.”

The 200-member group, based in Chicago and composed of heads of cities, companies and civic institutions, spent three days here reviewing success stories at home and thinking about future challenges, from education to transportation. At yesterday's Daley-Peñalosa morning session, about 200 San Diegans were invited to listen in.

The theme at the conference, “The Upside of Down: How To Keep Our Cities Great,” played off the economic doldrums everywhere. Daley contrasted his balanced-budget approach with that of the federal government and noted his bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics depends on private, not taxpayer, funding.

“We can't live in the future by going into debt,” Daley said, explaining that he has included a “rainy day” fund of up to $300 million in his budget plans through 2012.

But with close ties to the Obama administration, since the president is a former Illinois state senator and member of Congress from Chicago, Daley said he expects a deep understanding of the needs of urban areas as well as rural areas that are growing.

“All issues they confront are urban,” he said.

San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders welcomed the group, joined by local civic and corporate leaders at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, by saying San Diego can learn from the “big changes” going on in other cities.

In a conversation moderated by CEOs President Carol Coletta, Daley and Peñalosa spoke of their efforts to outsource public services, expand park systems, boost education and rely on neighborhoods and individuals to solve problems.

Daley, first elected in 1989, co-founded the CEOs group in 2000 to bring the heads of public and private institutions and governments together to find new ways to solve old problems.

Peñalosa, born in Washington, D.C., and mayor of the Colombian capital from 1998 to 2001, said he got elite private schools to manage poor public schools; turned a private polo field into a public park; and reordered transportation priorities to stress bikes and public transit over private vehicles.

He seemed most proud of his efforts to expand Bogotá's park system, calling open space a “magical good.” As he put it, a new shirt or toy brings instant gratification for only a few days or months, but a new park makes you “happy” for decades.

Mary Walshok, vice chancellor at the University of California San Diego and UCSD's representative to CEOs for Cities, said many topics discussed during the conference apply to San Diego: “The focus was on people making cities work, rather than just buildings and infrastructure.”

During the conference, CEOs announced a “national talent dividend tour” of 25 cities, including San Diego, to come up with ways to boost college graduation levels. A 1 percent increase in degree holders nationally could translate into $124 billion in income, the group said.